Patrick Henry's birth was my fastest, lasting a whole 2 hours from 1st contraction to the birth. It started out very innocently when I decided to head in to Labor & Delivery for an evaluation. I had a few random contractions throughout the day and I was not comfortable not knowing how close I was to starting labor. Plus, my labors are fast and have gotten faster. Anyway, I arrived at L&D and waited for a while. When I was finally called back to the room, I was hooked up to monitors. I had no contractions while I was there, so I felt sure I wasn't in labor. My doctor's partner came in and checked my progress and said that I was 3 cm dilated, which is no different than I had been for the previous 3 weeks. *sigh* She said that I should wait another half-hour or so before going home so I waited. My doctor arrived just before I was about to leave and she wanted to evaluate my progress as well as I was 2 days past my due date. My doctor was telling me her plan for me. "you're going to go home...get some some sleep...and come back tomorrow to have the baby..." As she was finishing up her thoughts about my going home, my water broke all over the place. At this point, she told me that I wasn't going home and to call my husband and get him here now. The nurses set me up in an L&D room and Todd arrived. I had a few contractions here and there and my OB figured I would start labor within 12 hours. Well...Patrick had different plans. Very different. After 2 or 3 hard contractions 3 minutes apart, I knew I was in full-blown labor. LABOR. I told the nurse in between contractions that I would be asking, no--begging, for drugs soon. I told her to ignore me or at least, take her time arranging it. I spent some time laboring in the shower and then laid on the bed so that they could monitor the baby for a bit. Once I laid down, labor sped up. Todd informed me that we were 2 people vying for the one remaining private room and whoever delivered first would get the room. I didn't really care about anything at that point. My contractions were right on top of each other. I was begging for drugs or if they could--pretty please, just kill me. It was a hard labor and I was not ready for it. Sometime soon after that I started pushing and 2 pushes later had baby Patrick on my chest. He was moving around and looking at me, but not crying. After some vigorous rubbing the doctor and nurse were able to make him cry. They took him and cleaned him up a little bit and weighed him. He weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and was 20 inches long. He started nursing and hasn't stopped! We spent an extra day in the hospital because he had some really bad jaundice, but it cleared up right away under the lights.
